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Ohio Republicans are lining up to be DeWine’s choice to fill Vance’s U.S. Senate seat

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) — Tuesday’s vote to return Republican former president Donald Trump to the White House has created an unusual situation for Gov. Mike DeWine – and for the newly elected Republican from Ohio, Bernie Moreno in the U.S. Senate.

Gov. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), incumbent running for re-election, speaks to reporters while joined by J.D. Vance, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, and other Republican candidates for statewide office outside their tour bus.
Gov. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), incumbent running for re-election, speaks to reporters while joined by J.D. Vance, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, and other Republican candidates for statewide office outside their tour bus. [Andy Chow | Statehouse News Bureau]
The idea of replacing newly elected vice president JD Vance in the U.S. Senate has been on the minds of a few possible contenders.

“Some people have already contacted me. I’ve already met with some people at their request,” said DeWine last week. “So but we’ll get down to it after the election, if that’s what happens.”

Just after voting for Trump and himself in Cincinnati Tuesday, Sen. JD Vance said he was confident they’d win but he didn’t want to talk about who might succeed him in the U.S. Senate.

“No. Look, I’m way too superstitious to think about those things. Let’s get this election over the finish line,” Vance said.

Among the names that have been suggested are former Ohio Republican Party chair Jane Timken and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who briefly ran for president. Two other prominent Republicans, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted and Attorney General Dave Yost, have been moving toward the 2026 race for governor.

Whoever is selected for the Senate seat will face a special election in 2026 to keep it. The seat would come up again for a full six-year term in 2028. So the selected candidate will need to be able to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars, as the last few U.S. Senate races have each been the costliest in Ohio history.

And though Bernie Moreno was just elected to the Senate, he’ll be considered Ohio’s senior senator after the appointment of the new senator, likely close to the end of the year. Moreno was elected to the seat DeWine had held from 1995 to 2006, when he lost to Democrat Sherrod Brown. Unofficial results show Moreno defeated Brown by 3.78 points, or 211,095 votes.